Locked Down
by moonswirl
Summary: Gleekathon, day 1807b: A betrayal close to home has left Fabray and Mackenna stranded with no one to rely on but each other. - Sunshine Girls 2 series - 5TH ANNIVERSARY CYCLE, day 1b of 21.


_Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 86th cycle. Now cycle 87!_

**_IT'S THE FIFTH ANNIVERSARY CYCLE OF_**_** GLEEKATHON!** \- Five years! Five years! *insert flailing* Okay, not quite, but by the end of this cycle, it will have been five years of daily stories (sometimes twice a day! ... and for seven very frightening days a couple years back, three times a day!). It will also be the end of this crazy ride. I started thinking about ending gleekathon months ago, and I wanted to finish my ongoing series before that happened. It made it so I could finish out this fifth year, and it couldn't be any better that this cycle is actually ending on October 22nd 2014, which was the day it began, in 2009... Now here we go!_

**This story is a Genre swap of _Locked &amp; Loaded_, a Sunshine Girls 2 series story originally posted on January 28th 2014.**

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**"Locked Down"  
Nora/Grace, Emily  
Sunshine Girls 2 series  
GENRE: Spy/action**

They were supposed to be a team. How long had it been the three of them, how much good had they done together? And now it was all spoiled, sent to ruin, because of a betrayal they'd never seen coming. Fabray, Mackenna, and Holt, it had been, for years, until this day, when one of them had been revealed a turn cloak. Holt had betrayed them, and now Fabray and Mackenna had been captured, locked in the cold room with no means of escape. It wouldn't stop them trying, in whatever way they chose. The former had evidently decided the solution resided in her fists and her feet, as she tried to break the door down.

"Nora! Nora, stop!" Grace shouted for her partner, knowing better than to get anywhere near her when she was this way. She'd tried to look at their situation from a more logical stance, but this was not taking her anywhere. The room gave them nothing as far as escape routes.

"I'm going to kill her!" Nora didn't stop, instead shouting at the door as though anyone, their former friend or anyone else, would hear or listen to her.

"Let me know how that turns out," Grace sat down. Nora smacked the door again, and this time she cried out, stopping short. "You okay?" she sighed.

"Fine," Nora stepped away from the door, shaking out her hand.

"Just come here and let me see," Grace insisted. They were going to freeze in here at this rate, but if they were going to get out of here, then they needed to be ready.

"I said I was fine," Nora stubbornly insisted, but one look from the redhead and she was marching across the room to offer her hand for inspection.

"Sit," Grace told her, and she did so. The hand was cautiously inspected.

"We are not stuck," Nora stated. "I won't give her that satisfaction. I want to break out of here. I want to see the look on her face… right before I wipe it off her."

"Right, we'll get on that, as soon as we figure out how to break through metal with nothing but our hands and feet. How's that going for you so far?" Grace didn't mean to sound so snappy, but after what they'd been through, and what was at risk…

"You're not giving up, are you? That's the last thing I need…"

"Nora, stop! Please," Grace grasped her hand, and Nora stared at her. It felt redundant to say it, knowing where they were, but she had a chill, staring back into her partner's eyes. There was so much they hadn't told each other, things no one knew but her… and Emily, which could almost have been a problem now. She had something over them, something she could use, to make them do what she wanted them to do.

"I'm not afraid of her," Nora shook her head.

"Maybe you should be," Grace breathed.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Nora asked. "Please don't tell me you're on her…"

"Her side?" Grace felt stung. "You would ask me that? You?" Nora looked instantly repentant.

"No, I didn't mean… I'm sorry…"

"I would never betray you," Grace vowed, and again she met Nora's eyes.

"I know you wouldn't," she promised back. "And I wouldn't either, to you," she nodded. They were quiet.

Sometimes she envied normal people, normal friends. With the work that they did, sometimes their ability to keep things close and hidden could make the difference between life and death, but the things she'd been keeping from Nora… It was meant to be for her own good, but it only grew harder with time, with every new mission, every new danger, and now… Losing Emily to this, it worried her for plenty, but most of all… most of all it worried her for what it could mean for Nora and her, for their friendship, for… everything… And there was Saito in this, too, who was still part of their team, if not part of this smaller unit of three… of two…

Time wore on, and with minutes, and with hours, the temperature only worsened their situation. They stayed close together for necessity, for warmth, but it only made it so Grace wasn't concerned about their mission anymore, not nearly as much as she was concerned about… about…

"Hey, hey…" Nora was shaking her. "Stay awake, come on. You can't sleep, you hear me."

"I'm not," Grace blinked. She'd lost focus for a second and that had been all it had taken for her to almost doze off. She looked at Nora.

She looked like a fairy… sparkling… a beautiful ice fairy. Not thinking about too much beyond that, Grace had reached over to touch her face, because it felt like the thing to do, when confronted with an ice fairy as beautiful as her.

"Stay with me," Nora begged.

The words gave her wings, gave her fire, enough that in the short breadth of space left between their trembling bodies, Grace had leaned in to breach the last space between them, between her partner and her, and she'd pressed her lips to hers. Limbs long numbed by the cold felt warmed, if only a little, but it was enough. Some might say something 'had gotten into her,' but she didn't care. If they were going to die here, which was starting to feel more and more like an inevitability, then Grace Mackenna would die, having regained what little honesty she'd sacrificed all this time. When Nora kissed her back, for one moment they were bursting with life again, even if their lips trembled against one another's.

They didn't know if/when someone would come for them, but cold or no, they knew they still had worth to their captors, and leaving them to die would accomplish nothing. They would be ready for them… for her.

"H-hey…" Grace's teeth chattered. "Want to get out of here?" she intoned as inviting as she could manage.

"Yeah… y-yeah… This place is d-dead anyw-way."

THE END

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**A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.  
****In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are  
****always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!**


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